Phonetics
phones: the
collection of all sounds that humans can make.
Phonemes: The sub-set of phones that make sense in any particular
language.
 All people share the same set of phones. Each language has its own set
of phonemes.
Human languages vary greatly in the number of phonemes they have.
Japanese and Hawaiian have relatively few...around 20. Hmong has
about 80, !Xu (in Southern Africa) may have as many as 140. English
has 35-40.
Generally speaking, English is a very simple language! No genders
and relatively few phonemes. French and Spanish have 2 genders, German
3, Swahili 6, and Kivunjo (spoken in Tanzania) 16 (Kivunjo verbs also have 7
prefixes and suffixes and fourteen tenses).
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